Author's Note:

Thanks for proofreading and editing Whisperwings!

And now: on with the story…

Chapter 17: Jailbird Romance

Jim couldn't sleep, to say the least. He was confused by Ariah's sudden pistol-point at Scroop. After all, Ariah had said that she and Scroop were best friends…

In his book: best friends usually don't point laser pistols threateningly at each other with the intent to kill. And what was worst, he couldn't get out of the crew's sleeping quarters without Silver telling him to get back to bed, no matter how quietly he tiptoed.

Morph too was unable to sleep. He had already spent the most of the night as a puddle over Jim's effects, whimpering sadly at the disappearance of Ariah.

Ariah's hammock and duffel bag of effects had been pushed into a dark corner of the crew's sleeping quarters… out of the way.

The long night was drawing to an end, hardly anyone slept well.

Finally the first piercing rays of starlight shone down on the RLS Legacy. Jim sluggishly got out of his hammock, groggy from the lack of sleep, and he walked to the galley. He had one thing on his mind that he needed to get straightened out.

Silver was already there, beginning to cook the crew's breakfast. The older sailor pondered insightfully about the incident last night.

It was he who had given Ariah the laser pistol the night of the brawl in Gyrogga, and he had never gotten around to asking for it back. He hadn't suspected that such carelessness would've escalated into this.

"Silver?" Jim asked the cyborg through a cloud of steam.

"Yes Jimbo?" Silver yawned.

"What did Ortona do to Ariah?" He demanded.

Silver sighed. He gently poured two servings of breakfast onto separate plates. "I think it'd be best…" He handed the plates to Jim. "If yeh asked Ariah herself." Silver thought for a moment. "By the way." He added, and pressed a medium-sized flask into Jim's free hand. "Give this teh her. It's a healing tonic… she'll need it."

Jim nodded. He pocketed the canteen of liquid, balanced a plate on either hand and walked out of the galley, first up to the main deck, and then down the long steps to the lower decks.

Ariah's assumption was proven correct the moment the boiler room was fired up and its door was casually left opened. A thick fog of steam covered the entire length of the hallway to the brig, and Ariah's cell was horrendously humid.

Any given sailor that was on the upper deck would've noticed the usual amount of mist rising from the grate on the deck and hardly give it a second thought… but now Ariah realized what it truly was.

The young prisoner had stripped herself of her red vest and boots, now only pacing the cell in her trousers and her bandaged torso. Her black hair was let down from its ponytail and her red bandanna was stuffed into her boots.

Small rivers of sweat sprouted from Ariah's hairline and ran down the length of her face to her neck and down her back. Ariah was getting a little dizzy from the heat and she dearly wished that she had something to drink. Her black hair was plastered to her face and neck from the humidity.

Suddenly a pair of boots clomped down the steps into the brig. Ariah looked up to the barred door. She could barely see anything through the haze of steam and the dizziness lack of water was giving her. But then a shadow came up to the barred cell and she recognized it.

"Jim?" She asked weakly. She shuffled to the barred door and stood across from Jim.

"Hey." Jim smiled back half-heartedly. "I brought your breakfast." He passed a small plate of food through the bars.

"Thank you." Ariah smiled gratefully. She took the plate into her hands, slowly began to eat her portion of breakfast and sat down on the floor of the cell.

Jim sat down across the wall of bars and began eating his own portion of food. "It's hot as hell down here." He stated, tugging off his jacket so he was only wearing a loose olive green shirt and he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows.

"Seems hotter." Ariah wiped some sweat off of her forehead with the back of her hand.

Morph carelessly whizzed down to the brig through the grate in the ceiling at the sound of Ariah's voice. He snuggled closely to Ariah's cheek.

"Hey Morphy." Ariah smiled at the coolness of Morph's body. She cuddled against the transformer before she looked back at Jim.

"What happened to your…" He nodded at her torso bandages.

"Oh." Ariah looked down at herself. "These?"

"Yeah." Jim waited patiently.

"It's from a little while ago." Ariah shrugged level-headedly.

"And the bruise?" Jim raised an eyebrow.

"What bruise?" Ariah raised an eyebrow back.

Jim pointed at the black-haired prisoner's right shoulder.

Curiously, Ariah looked over her right shoulder. A large, dark purple bruise had formed around the circumference of it; and was discovered tender after an experimental prod.

Ariah cleared her throat and shrugged nonchalantly. "It's likely from the fight." She stated calmly.

"Gosh, he beat you up badly, Ariah." Jim shook his head, stirring his food half-heartedly.

"It's alright, Jim…" Ariah stated.

"No it's not!" Jim shouted, glaring frankly at Ariah through the barred door. "Look at yourself Ariah, you're lucky to be alive…" The brunette teenager sighed. "I've got do something…"

"Jim…" Ariah gasped and shook her head. "Don't…" Her eyes were wide with terror.

"Why not?" Jim snapped angrily. "Look what he's done to you, Ariah!" The cabin boy furrowed his brow. "He should be the one locked up here, not you!"

"Don't go up against him, Jim…" Ariah stated faintly.

"And why not?" Jim glared at Ariah, abandoning his breakfast.

"Because…" Ariah turned away. "I don't want you to get hurt, Jim…"

Jim was silent, realizing how much Ariah cared for him. He sighed, calming down, and grabbed his plate of food. "Fine…" Jim paused. "I'll keep clear of Spider Psycho…"

Ariah smiled weakly, and decided to stay off the topic. "So, is there anything on you mind, Jim?"

"Well…" Jim sighed. "What is it that Ortona do to you?"

"Ortona?" Ariah raised her eyebrows at the mention of the name. Not from annoyance, but mostly from surprise that Jim even knew it.

"Uh." Jim paused. "Silver told me his name." He cringed. "For the Smarmy Jerk?"

"Yeah." Ariah sighed. She leaned against the bars. "I trusted him too much and then he cheated on me." She stated plainly. "With some alien princess we were escorting on that particular voyage." She narrowed her copper-brown eyes. "I guess he was trying to get a leg-up in society while leaving me pounded in the dust." Ariah frowned. "Unfortunately there was some sort of pirate invasion that destroyed his ship before I personally could get a hold of him." She stirred her food half-heartedly.

"Pirate… Invasion?" Jim raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "Weren't you on that ship, Ariah?" He asked.

"Not at the time of the invasion." Ariah shrugged. "Me, and some of the crew were sent out on a short expedition to a neighbouring planet to pick up some provisions, but there was a storm on the planet that caused our longboat's engine to fail, and we couldn't reach the ship in time." The young woman sighed. "Most of the crew on the ship escaped safely, but everyone else was caught in the fire that destroyed the ship, or killed by the pirates." She stopped to eat a bit of her breakfast.

"Who were the pirates?" Jim asked.

"I don't know." Ariah shook her head. "The storm that hit us on the planet was pretty bad; a typhoon I think is what they called it..." She paused and smoothed her bangs out of her eyes. "We only got word of the pirate invasion when the rest of the crew landed on the planet the following morning, and the news we got was few in details."

"Oh." Jim ate some of his breakfast silently.

"Anything else?" Ariah enquired. "Or was that what you came down here for?"

"Not only that…" Jim shrugged.

Ariah faced Jim. "What else?" She pushed her empty plate through the bars.

"Well." Jim rubbed the back of his sweating neck. He piled the plates on a small table below a hurricane lamp that glowed in the dimness of the steaming hallway. "I… wanted to give you something too."

Ariah stood up and pressed herself against the bars. "Yes?"

Jim smiled, looking softly into Ariah's copper-brown eyes. He stepped towards the barred doorway to her cell and placed each hand on a bar. They locked sights and Jim leaned forwards, gently kissing Ariah on the lips through the bars.

Ariah was at first surprised from Jim's fervour, but responded with equal zeal as much as she possibly could within the confines of her cell. She slipped her bare arms through the bars and held onto Jim.

"Cabin Boy!" A gruff voice yelled from about them. "You're wanted in the galley."

The brunette teenager reluctantly separated from the kiss. Ariah pulled her arms back into her cell and looked at Jim weakly.

Jim grabbed the canteen from his pocket, and briefly kissed Ariah's on the lips while pressing it into her hand. Then Jim took the pile of dishes and left the brig soundlessly, with Morph buzzing obediently by his shoulder.

Ariah looked at the small canteen Jim had given her and smiled. He truly was a lifesaver… She sighed and thought half-heartedly 'I guess that means we're even…'

Perhaps getting in a fight with Ariah was one of the more unintelligent things that Scroop's temper had caused him to do. But at least now, in Scroop's mind, Ariah couldn't run off with the Cabin Boy because she couldn't run off anywhere.

The crimson arachnid in question was currently scaling the mainmast while the rest of the crew was either finishing their breakfast or roaming the deck.

There was an unusual air about the crew after Scroop and Ariah's battle. Uncertainty would be the most appropriate word to describe it.

But at least he knew where Ariah was. It's not like she was going anywhere…

Ariah couldn't help but feel some odd sense of self-worth as she watched Jim walk up the stairs to the upper decks. Ever since Gordon Ortona's betrayal, she had believed that she simply wouldn't trust anyone to avoid getting hurt.

But now... Jim made her feel the same warm and fuzzy happiness -which she had lost from a broken heart- all over again. But this, she feared, was stronger; and much more powerful than anything else she had ever felt.

After experiencing the intense heat of the brig, the stuffy galley seemed much more relaxing than ever before to Jim as he washed the morning's dishes. There was an odd sense of cheeriness in the air, and Jim could only explain it as riding on cloud nine.

Even if Ariah was locked up in the brig, at least he wouldn't have to always be searching the ship for her… and as an added bonus, she had kissed him back. This was something he had originally thought that would've given him a hard slap across the face; which meant that she shared his feelings about them.

Jim smirked lightly as he scrubbed the bottom of a pot. Kisses were kisses… and though these had been his first few in his entire life from a girl outside his family, there was something he felt deep inside him, even when he was just thinking about Ariah.

He knew now that she was different than everyone else. Not only in the fact that she didn't judge him by his lack of having a father around –though she had only just figured this out- but also just because she was such a good friend.

The cabin boy shook a bit of his bangs out of his eyes and finished up the last of the dishes. He wiped the soapsuds from his water-wrinkled hands on his apron and hung the apron on a peg in the galley.

Jim grabbed the iconic 'Mrs Bucket' and 'Mr Mop' from their dark corner of the galley and walked out onto the main deck to give it a thorough swabbing without having Silver order him to do so.

Ariah sat in the coolest corner of her cell that she could find. The vaporous steam had faded minutely -from the lesser need of engine power- to a translucent mist, but it was still uncomfortably warm in the brig.

The imprisoned sailor fiddled with the lacing of her vest that she had decided to wear when the temperature dropped slightly. She tugged the last few bits of the string from the holes in her vest until she had an arm's length piece of leather to play around with.

She pushed back her red bandana, ignoring the increase in temperature, and tightened her ponytail. Through the grated opening in the ceiling she could spot a bright comet soaring through the sky. It was probably amazing to see up close.

Ariah smiled fondly. When she was younger, in the beginning years of her adventures as a sailor, she had always begged either Scroop or Silver to take her out to see a comet up close. Only once had the two sailors fulfilled her plea, and that was on her sixteenth birthday where they looked closely at a particularly large comet.

She remembered how cold and eerily bright the centre of the comet had been. The burning chunk of metal was among the most amazing things. All three of them were covered in snow once they exited the comet's tail; but Ariah had always thought of it as one of the best birthday presents anyone had ever given her.

Once all of his chores were finished after lunch, besides the obvious chores for the upcoming dinner, Jim encountered Silver. His first instinct was to expect more chores, but his unusually cheerful mood made him care less.

Surprisingly Silver didn't give Jim any more chores. Instead he offered to show Jim how the longboats worked, since they now had some free time.

Though Jim already knew the basics of how to drive the longboat -from his and Ariah's little side trip to test her solar glider the few weeks ago- he figured that learning all of the tweaks of it wouldn't hurt. And so… Jim, Morph and Silver left for the dock house.

Author's Note:

Yup… Now back on track to the original movie.

MG#6